The Gift (2015)
Directed by Joel Edgerton
Simon and Robyn are a young married couple whose life is going as planned until a chance run-in with Simon's high school acquaintance sends their world into a tailspin.
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What critics say influenced The Gift
The sins of the high-school cafeteria come home to roost in “The Gift,” a coolly unsettling thriller that begins as an unironic homage to late-’80s/early-’90s yuppies-in-peril dramas like “Fatal Attraction” and “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle,” before taking a turn toward the moral and existential minefield of Michael Haneke’s “Cache.”
The television spots and trailers sell the film as a stalker thriller akin to films such as Pacific Heights and Fatal Attraction.
In staging that setup, Edgerton -- who makes his writing and directing debut behind the camera while also appearing in front of it -- harkens back to the domestic intruder thrillers of the 1980s and '90s -- such as "Pacific Heights," "Fatal Attraction" and so on -- where a seemingly good-natured and friendly enough person turns into a living nightmare for those he or she bugs, stalks and ultimately terrorizes.
"The Gift" is a tight little thriller that recalls the good old days of "Fatal Attraction" and "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle," back when suspicious packages appeared on the doorstep, no affair went unpunished, and the family dog was never safe.
The Gift recalls the stalked, terrorized or targeted yuppies of Fatal Attraction and Pacific Heights.
The astute horror fan might think they can anticipate what comes next; likely something in the vein of Fatal Attraction or One Hour Photo, where a deranged sociopath infiltrates a happy family and slowly tears it apart through manipulation and violence.
Anyone old enough to remember Michael Keaton, Matthew Modine, and Melanie Griffith in John Schlesinger’s yuppie horror effort Pacific Heights will catch a similar vibe in what Edgerton is after.
The television spots and trailers sell the film as a stalker thriller akin to films such as Pacific Heights and Fatal Attraction.
In staging that setup, Edgerton -- who makes his writing and directing debut behind the camera while also appearing in front of it -- harkens back to the domestic intruder thrillers of the 1980s and '90s -- such as "Pacific Heights," "Fatal Attraction" and so on -- where a seemingly good-natured and friendly enough person turns into a living nightmare for those he or she bugs, stalks and ultimately terrorizes.
The Gift recalls the stalked, terrorized or targeted yuppies of Fatal Attraction and Pacific Heights.
At face value, Edgerton’s film about a suspicious oddball intruding upon a married couple’s carefully manicured life sounds akin to serviceable stalker schlock like “Pacific Heights,” “Unlawful Entry” or “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle.”
This is no basic Hollywood thriller like, say, John Schlesinger’s Pacific Heights (1990).
Elements of the script are certainly familiar; Michael Haneke's psychological thriller "Cache" is one possible reference point, and there's a sinister final plot development that goes all the way back to Elizabethan and Jacobean theater (as well as Bruce Norris' play "Purple Heart").
The sins of the high-school cafeteria come home to roost in “The Gift,” a coolly unsettling thriller that begins as an unironic homage to late-’80s/early-’90s yuppies-in-peril dramas like “Fatal Attraction” and “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle,” before taking a turn toward the moral and existential minefield of Michael Haneke’s “Cache.”
He fills the spaces between the shock points with interesting, stirring topics — from cutthroat competition in the corporate sphere, to how little we know about those closest to us, to, as in “Cache,” the arrogance of the privileged.
No es que El regalo se inspire explícitamente las películas de Park Chan-wook y Jaume Balagueró (tampoco el director parece haberlas citado en ningún momento como referentes), pero la superposición de ambas propuestas nos lleva a un terreno muy cercano a los temas que trata el film que nos ocupa: de OldBoy , El regalo recogería la idea del pasado como una ola funesta que descarga contra el presente de un personaje (en ese sentido, otra posible ancla sería el Caché de Michael Haneke).
The sins of the high-school cafeteria come home to roost in “The Gift,” a coolly unsettling thriller that begins as an unironic homage to late-’80s/early-’90s yuppies-in-peril dramas like “Fatal Attraction” and “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle,” before taking a turn toward the moral and existential minefield of Michael Haneke’s “Cache.”
"The Gift" is a tight little thriller that recalls the good old days of "Fatal Attraction" and "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle," back when suspicious packages appeared on the doorstep, no affair went unpunished, and the family dog was never safe.
At face value, Edgerton’s film about a suspicious oddball intruding upon a married couple’s carefully manicured life sounds akin to serviceable stalker schlock like “Pacific Heights,” “Unlawful Entry” or “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle.”
To divulge much more might spoil a superior film in an overworked genre once heavily populated by the likes of "Fatal Attraction," "Pacific Heights," "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle" and other domestic thrillers.
Faster than you can say Fatal Attraction and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, the socially stunted Gordo starts showing up unannounced and staring into the wraparound windows of his old schoolmate’s pricey hillside home.
It winds up having more in common with “Rosemary’s Baby” than, say, “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle,” being a deeply empathetic look at a woman being slowly dehumanized and used by unseemly forces, in this case by men who aren’t always aware of the evil forces lurking inside them.
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Thematically, The Gift is reminiscent of Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby (1968), which is also about a young, emotionally fragile, but fundamentally decent young woman who discovers that she is married to a man whose egocentrism and desire for personal success drives him to commit heinous deeds.
Recovering from a miscarriage, she’s beset by strange dreams and bad vibes, with which Edgerton infuses a “Rosemary’s Baby” sort of dread.
She’d make a mean Rosemary of Rosemary’s Baby.
It winds up having more in common with “Rosemary’s Baby” than, say, “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle,” being a deeply empathetic look at a woman being slowly dehumanized and used by unseemly forces, in this case by men who aren’t always aware of the evil forces lurking inside them.
At one point, the film seems like it might be moving in the direction of a classic psychological female thriller in the vein of “Bunny Lake is Missing,” or “Repulsion,” where female emotion is pathologized and mocked.
At face value, Edgerton’s film about a suspicious oddball intruding upon a married couple’s carefully manicured life sounds akin to serviceable stalker schlock like “Pacific Heights,” “Unlawful Entry” or “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle.”
It's the kind of setup that's typically employed in the context of an entertaining yet far-from-fresh "blank from hell" thriller (eg The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, The Temp, Unlawful Entry, etc, etc) and yet writer/director Edgerton does a superb job of ultimately subverting one's expectations, as The Gift, though saddled with a rather familiar opening hour, eventually moves into a third act that's riddled with impossible-to-predict surprises and plot twists.
That's the superficial starting point of The Gift, the directorial debut of actor Joel Edgerton, who takes the cuckoo-in-the-nest thriller template – which became ubiquitous in the early '90s with films like Pacific Heights, Unlawful Entry, Single White Female and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle – and, by introducing psychological depth and a streak of social conscience, fashions an intriguing morality tale.
Bateman brings his smug persona to the fore, and at times he could be auditioning for an English remake of Fassbinder's Martha , playing a domestic tyrant who hides his domineering nature behind false indulgence, always getting his way with a thin smile and a way of phrasing a command to sound like what Simon wants is what Robyn wanted all along.
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The Golden Age of Stylish Movies About Stalkers commenced with “Fatal Attraction” in 1987 and ran through the mid-1990s, with films such as “Pacific Heights,” “Single White Female,” “Sleeping With the Enemy,” “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle,” “Bad Influence,” “Disclosure,” “Fear,” “Unlawful Entry” and wow there were a LOT of movies back then with posters featuring good-looking humans and their good-looking tormenters.
And thanks to Edgerton for pointing out, in a Q&A following the press screening, his directorial prank of paying homage to Rodney Ascher's cult documentary Room 237 (a geek-o-rama examination of Kubrick's The Shining) by putting that number on every office door in the movie.